Gates Foresees 'Digital Decade' Of Wide Technology GainsGates Foresees 'Digital Decade' Of Wide Technology Gains

LAS VEGAS--Two-thirds of the way through his keynote address at the Comdex trade show Sunday night, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates watched a manager for Xbox, the company's new video-game console, boot the system up in about 10 seconds, then shut it down with the push of a button. "We ought to do that for the PC," Gates said.

That sentiment summarized Gates' message: In the "digital decade" ahead, advances in technology will lead to productivity improvements that exceed those realized in the '90s, but Microsoft and the computer industry must make it easier to set up, manage, and communicate with PCs and servers.

"It's often said that people will overestimate how much things will change in a two- to three-year period," Gates said. But people underestimate how much things change over longer periods, he added, citing the ubiquity of E-mail and the proliferation of digital photography. He predicted that Moore's Law, which specifies that computing processing power will double every 18 months at a given price, would hold true for the next 10 years. That bodes well for Microsoft initiatives to expand the use of speech, handwriting, and natural-language text commands as a means of controlling computers. An example of such technology was provided by Microsoft group VP Jeff Raikes, who came onstage to demonstrate a prototype for pen-driven Tablet PCs, due next year.

But a dearth of broadband connections is holding back innovation, and a majority of U.S. homes probably won't have them for another four to six years, Gates said. He also called today's approaches to E-commerce, in which the Internet acts as a terminal environment, "rather shallow." Still to come: an era of XML Web services that enables more sophisticated, "friction-free" E-commerce and E-business transactions, such as searching for buyers and sellers without middlemen.

Gates said Microsoft needs to create more "trustworthy systems" that are harder to crack and can handle administrative tasks, such as bringing more hardware online to tackle computing jobs, with less operator intervention.

As for today's products, Gates said, Windows XP has sold 7 million copies since Oct. 25; beta 3 of Windows.Net Server--due next year-- will be distributed later this month; and Microsoft will launch Visual Studio.Net, its new Web-services development tools suite, in February. The Xbox is set to launch Thursday.